Writing - Gestation of a thriller

Some writers believe that all those piles of writing ideas that had not been translated into either short stories or books should be ditched. There’s sense in that – tidying up, clearing the wheat from the chaff.

However, some ideas require time to gestate and may be worth holding onto - for years. I have several examples of retaining ideas that have ultimately paid dividends; here’s one.

When I was training in the RN in 1971, our group spent an evening round the mess table and set up a Ouija session, using a tumbler and placed in a circle pieces of paper with the alphabet and numbers on them. Needless to say, despite our best efforts, nothing intelligible resulted. Then I proposed that the gobbledegook was in code. And an idea formed. The message would be transmitted by a psychic spy, Tana Standish.

But, in the final analysis, it didn’t seem to be gibberish.

By the time Keith Tyson deciphered the first paragraph, he felt sick inside.

Unsmiling narrow mouth beneath a salt-and-pepper moustache, Jock stubbed out half-smoked cigarettes repeatedly. He was a bag of nerves since his last mission. It was plain on his face that he knew this astral message was very bad.

At last Tyson put down the pencil and raised his grey eyes. His expression was solemn. “It’s from Tana,” he said. “They’ve got her.”

Alan Swann’s face lost most of its colour as he leaned forward. He queried softly, “Where?”

“Czechoslovakia.” (p174)

That was the set-up. So I wrote a 2,000-word short story entitled ‘The Ouija Message’. Even though by then I’d sold a number of action-adventure stories, this one didn’t find a home. In retrospect, I realised that the story needed more space. I embarked on writing a book – same title – and it stretched to a modest 50,000 words.

At that time (1974) publishers were not averse to commenting on submissions. Robert Hale was not keen on the psychic elements but said ‘the work is up to publication standard and indeed better than many that are published’. So that was encouraging. Alas, a good number of rejections of Ouija followed and time passed and life-work tended to get in the way. I continued to have reasonable successes with short story and article sales, and wrote other books, thrillers and fantasy, but didn’t sell any of those novels either.

Time passed. As it does. Then, in 2007 I dug out a one-line idea – ‘He was dressed entirely in black. Black because he was in mourning. Mourning the men he had killed.’ I decided to write a western! That same year I sold the resultant book to Hale, and five more followed before they went out of business. At the same time, I had success with the Harry Bowling Prize, winning an award with the first chapters of a crime novel. While, sadly, I didn’t get agent representation, the success spurred me on to finish that crime book and it was accepted by a new publisher, Libros, under the title Pain Wears No Mask; (Libros went out of business but now the book is available as The Bread of Tears). On the back of these two successes, I revisited The Ouija Message and, thanks to all those years of writing experience, vastly improved the book to the extent that it ran to 80,000 words and it was accepted by Libros in 2008. That book spawned two more adventures and I’m busy writing the fourth in the Tana Standish psychic spy series. Since my breakthrough in 2007 I’ve had 37 books published.

The moral of all this? Never give up on your writing ideas. Believe in yourself. And if you keep writing, you keep improving.

 

Note: The Tana Standish books are: Mission: Prague (Czechoslovakia, 1975); Mission: Tehran (Iran, 1978); Mission: Khyber (Afghanistan, 1979); Mission: Falklands (Argentina, 1982) – work in progress.

Writing – research – Nazis – psychic-04

For the final glimpse into the book PSYCHIC DISCOVERIES BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder (1970) this copy 1976, we’ll look at the Nazis and Hitler.

It’s already been mentioned (in psychic-01 here that Hitler was a believer in the occult. A good number of authors have mined this subject, among them Dennis Wheatley, Daniel Easterman, James Twining, Graham Masterton and James Herbert.

According to this book, Czechs said the Nazi movement was deeply involved with the black arts. Hitler was born in Braunau Inn in Austria, a town long famous for the large number of mediums it produced (including Willy Schneider, who had the same wet nurse as Hitler!)

Apparently, Hitler was trained in mediumship by Prof Haushofer of the University of Munich. (See The Morning of the Magicians).

One man who fought Nazism was Stefan Ossowiecki (1877-1944). He was a telepathist, clairvoyant, and could resort to astral projection. He helped the underground during the war, giving information on lost and imprisoned people. Holding a scrap of clothing, he was able to reveal where victims had been executed, and where they were buried.

Documented accounts speak of him locating specific bodies in mass graves layered with the dead.

On the day of Warsaw Uprising, he was killed by the Nazis; his body was never found, as he predicted.

***

From time to time, Tana Standish crossed paths with Nazis – bearing in mind that she was active in the 1970s and 1980s.

One nasty Nazi was Dr Wolf Schneider, who was born in 1920. He was responsible for torturing Tana in Czechoslovakia in 1975 (The Prague Papers). He didn’t employ black magic, just plain evil shock electric shock treatment. He was later recruited by Spetsnaz officer Aksakov in The Tehran Text mission.

Tana was not versed in astral projection, though she was learning to harness remote viewing - which is another subject worthy of comment in a later blog. Aided by recourse to bio-feedback, she used this in a haunting and poignant scene in The Tehran Text.

Tana Standish can be found in The Prague Papers and TheTehran Text.

The Tehran Text quiz - answers and winners

1.  Yazd is an ancient city in Iran. It’s featured in the book. What is Yazd famous for, apart from being one of the oldest cities, over 5,000 years in existence?

A. Home of Zoroastrianism. Silk production; badgirs – air conditioning/wind-catchers; the city itself has a fire temple which holds a fire that has been kept alight continuously since 470 AD.

Winner – Charles T. Whipple

2. Tana Standish employs remote viewing to locate a friend in Evin prison, Tehran. Did the US and UK governments test this paranormal ability, and if so when?

A. Yes, it started in earnest in 1975 but was wound up as being inconclusive in 1995.

Winner – Shani Struthers

3. At the time of Tana’s mission (1978), a Bulgarian journalist was assassinated with the help of KGB agents in London. Who was he and how was he killed?

A. Georgi Markov, an umbrella fired a ricin pellet into his leg and he subsequently died of poisoning.

Winner – Tim Taylor

The Tehran Text

 

Day after launch rankings:

 

Amazon UK =

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #23,156 Paid in Kindle Store    

• #42 in Kindle Store > Books > Crime, Thriller & Mystery > Suspense > Political
• #70 in Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Political

 

Amazon COM =

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,169 Paid in Kindle Store    

• #58 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers & Suspense > Supernatural > Psychics
•  

Thanks to everyone who has purchased this e-book, the sequel to The Prague Papers.

Books, more books

Crooked Cat Publishing has just accepted my latest book. Which will be released in April 2015.

And they're publishing THE TEHRAN TEXT, the sequel to THE PRAGUE PAPERS on 17 February!

A bottle of cava has been opened...

Tana Standish, psychic spy - 01

I’m pleased to announce that Crooked Cat Publishing have accepted my first two Tana Standish chronicles.

 

Tana Standish, a child-survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, was adopted by a British naval Lieutenant and eventually joined the British Secret Intelligence Service. She is a psychic with a photographic memory. Each adventure begins with the passing of a collection of papers and manuscripts to the author (Nik Morton) by one of her secret service associates. He then writes down her experiences. The first is The Prague Papers (Czechoslovakia, 1975), followed by The Tehran Text (Iran, 1978), both of which have been previously published (2008 & 2009 respectively), though the latter received minimal exposure as the collapse of the publisher occurred almost at the same time as its release. The next two adventures are planned; these are: The Khyber Chronicle – (Afghanistan, 1979/80), half-completed, and The Caldera Cryptogram (Argentina, Falklands, 1982).

 

The timeline for Tana’s secret service career is shown below:

The Singapore Signal – 1965 – (Tana’s first mission)

The Naples Note - 1966

The Izmir Intelligence - 1967

The Odessa Objective – 1968

The Pilsen Portfolio– 1968

The Karachi Code - 1970

The Elba Errand – 1971

The Gibraltar Gathering - 1972

The Mombasa Message - 1973

The Hong Kong Cover – 1974

The Prague Papers – 1975

The Peking Profile – 1976

The Bulawayo Bulletin – Jan 1977

The Mogadishu Memorandum – Jul 1977

The Cairo Codicil – Dec 1977

The Tehran Text - 1978

The Khyber Chronicle – 1979-1980

The Caldera Cryptogram – 1980-1982

The Savannah Statement - 1983

The Dingli Disclosure – 1984 (Malta)

The Malaga Missive – 1985

The Oslo Observation - 1985

 

More disclosures from the secret annals soon!

Recurrent images: beginnings and echoes

Using a leitmotif in your fiction can provide an added dimension. This is a recurrent idea or image. Indeed, there may be several different leitmotifs in the novel.

In my series of novels about Tana Standish, psychic spy of the Cold War, I begin each book with similar imagery. This serves a number of purposes – it thrusts the reader directly into the action and it reveals something about the characters involved, for example.

The first two books are out of print and seeking a new publisher; the third is a work in progress, with more to follow in time.

The Prague Papers - ONE: Prelude

Czechoslovakia, August, 1968

Six Soviet officers stood on the balcony overlooking St. Wenceslas Square and the definition through the sniper-scope was so good that Tana Standish could detect the black-heads round their noses and the blood-shot eyes that testified to late-night celebrating with alcohol. She had ten 7.5mm rounds, more than enough to kill all of them. 

            Tana had a steady grip but there was no risk of weapon-shake anyway as the new Giat F1 rifle rested on its bipod on the window-sill. She had also made sure that, as this weapon was fresh from the French production-line, it could not be traced back to England.            

            Dressed in his brown-grey greatcoat with bright red lapel flashes, General of the Army Ivan Pavlovsky cocked his head to the left while he listened attentively to his commanders. He was thick-set, with small dark eyes and a pug nose whose nostrils bristled with hair.

            Try as she might, she could not detect any thoughts from the officers. But she was able to lip-read. They were in a self-congratulatory mood, since the invasion had gone well, with only a few Czech and Slovak deaths. Vodka had indeed flowed last night.

            As one of the main architects of the offensive, Pavlovsky would have the honour to die first. She levelled the cross-hairs on the general’s forehead, just between the close-set eyes.

            For God’s sake, don’t! Along with the words that she snatched from Laco’s tumbling thoughts came a familiar dull ache at the back of her neck. Her mouth went very dry. Tana lifted her finger away from the trigger and felt cold sweat start its trail down the side of her brow.

            She turned her head as, seconds later, Laco unlocked the apartment door and rushed inside, slamming the door behind him.

            ‘Thank God I caught you in time!’ he gasped, eyes staring at the rifle on its stand.

            ‘We agreed,’ Tana said evenly, ‘if we got the opportunity, it was too good to pass up.’ Out of the corner of her eye she watched the Soviet officers. They weren’t going anywhere. Two of them were pointing down into the street, where a car was on fire.          

            Laco heaved a sigh of resignation. ‘We intercepted a radio message.’ He rested his back against the wall by the door and slowly sank down on his haunches, head in his hands. ‘They said there will be reprisals if we kill any of their officers.’

            ‘If I was one of the other ranks,’ she said, ‘I’d be a bit upset about that.’ But it wasn’t a joking matter. Reprisal was not a nice word in Czechoslovakia.

            She drew the lace curtain across the window, concealing the weapon.

            Kneeling beside Laco, Tana gently took his hands in hers. She understood. He was only nineteen and he didn’t want another Lidice on his conscience. ‘One day, we’ll beat them,’ she said, ‘I promise.’

FR1 rifle - Wikipedia commons

 

The Tehran Transcript – ONE: HEART

Friday, September 8, 1978

Iran
Dressed in his sinister black SAVAK uniform, Captain Hassan Mokhtarian looked every inch the evil man he was. A man who deserved to die.

            Tana Standish could see him quite clearly through the telescopic sight, even making allowances for the poor light as dusk descended over Tehran and the city’s surrounding mountains, turning the overshadowing snow-capped cone of Mount Damavand a delicate shade of mauve. At least today the city smog didn’t obscure the peak of the volcano which still belched out sulphurous fumes from time to time and killed the odd stray sheep.

            Hassan exuded an air of danger with his pitted complexion and deep-set ebony eyes under a prominent forehead ridge. While SAVAK was a civilian organisation, many of its officers were military men and they relished wearing a uniform which instilled fear in the population.

            Standing in the open doorway of his villa, he exhaled smoke through his nostrils and dropped the Marlboro cigarette to the lightly coloured marble-tiled step, grinding it under the toe of his boot. His eyes glinted, as if he took pleasure in the destruction of even small things.

Hassan smiled as he closed the door behind him and stepped down to the waiting limousine with its bullet-proof smoked-glass windows. The government driver opened the door.

            Going to fat, his black silk shirt taut against his stomach, Hassan paused, one shining boot in the vehicle, and glanced back at the window to the right of the entrance. His wife Rosa waved.

            He had excelled himself with the Koofteh Berenji. The balls of meat had been filled with barberries, walnuts and fried onions. They were delicious. Normally, Rosa arranged for the chief maid to buy their meat for the chef, but on this occasion he’d insisted they take from the freezer the most recent gift from headquarters.

            Rosa allowed his odd whim – it was about once a month, he supposed, that he dictated what they ate and actually cooked it himself. It just depended on the quality of the source. He joked that it made him stronger, more capable of doing the Shah’s work, and of course the chef got a day off into the bargain.

            Now he grinned broadly at the memory and he experienced a thrilling shiver down his spine. Hassan wondered what Rosa would say if she realised the ground meat they’d eaten was the heart of Savak Hoveyda, a particularly recalcitrant activist for “people’s rights”.

            He used his big nicotine-stained fingers to brush back the oiled hair from his forehead, gave Rosa a cursory wave and, abruptly, his heart lurched and his normally emotionless features contorted in distress, deep furrows appearing in his prominent forehead, and his eyes screwed tight as sudden intense pain assailed his hands. It was as if his fingernails were being pulled out by the same pincers his men had used on Hoveyda, the same he had planned to use tonight on the anonymous Mojahedin woman.

            Shaking violently, Hassan staggered back and fortunately his driver caught him before he could fall on the hard marble steps.

 

Tears streamed down Tana’s face and dampened the black cotton material of her chador as she watched Hassan Mokhtarian stumble backwards into his driver’s arms. The optical telescopic sight – the Mauser SP66 had no obscuring iron sights - provided her with a very detailed picture of her target’s sudden facial transformation.

            It wasn’t enough, though. It never would be, she thought, the familiar taste of iron in her dry mouth.

            Thought-transference was something quite alien to the self-satisfied torturer of the Shah’s Security and Intelligence Service, SAVAK. It pained her as much this time as it had when she’d received the psychic echoes from her friend Savak Hoveyda – so ironically did they give their security and intelligence service the acronym which was a common Persian name!

Mauser SP66 rifle - Wikipedia commons

The Khyber Code – ONE: HERAT

Wednesday, February 14, 1979
Afghanistan
Cross-hairs of the telescopic sight centred on the man’s creased forehead, just below his brown and grey woollen hat. Steadying the weapon, Clayton tried calming the anger and disgust that threshed in his body. He needed a quick, clean shot. Stop breathing, squeeze the trigger. Now!

            The stock of the Mannlicher-Carcano carbine thudded into his shoulder as the gun’s report bounced off the hills. The 6.5mm calibre bullet made a bloody mess of the man’s head, splattering blood over his long-sleeved astrakhan coat. A lifeless hand dropped the curved knife.

            As the echo of his shot died, Clayton levered the bolt, feeding another cartridge into the breech, and fired again.

 

Not too many minutes earlier, Clayton had been on foot, gingerly leading his horse down the rocky scree slope towards the village. Although it was cold, he wore tough hide sandals, as did all tribesmen in the mountains. His disguise required it, since he was liable to pray five times a day and that meant preceding his devotions with ablutions of cold water on the back of the neck and feet. Few devout Afghans could be bothered with lace-up boots, they took too long to remove. He wore chalwar kameez, a wool hat and a black leather patch over his left eye. His pattu was slung over his back.

            He was about an hour early to pick up young Sher, his helper and guide, who reckoned that he’d found a buried ancient minaret just two days’ ride away.

            He stopped, noticing a gathering of men and a young woman outside an adobe house on the edge of the village. Two horses were standing idle by a hitching rail. Further down the village street, people watched furtively from windows and doorways, heads hooded, only their eyes visible.

            Clayton lifted the false eye-patch to get a better view of the group. Their body language indicated that something was amiss.

            Old instinct kicked in. Withdrawing the rifle from its leather boot under his woollen saddle-cloth, he sat back on the slope and rested his elbow on his knee and studied the group through the telescopic sight.

            Sher was being restrained by two stocky villagers with bushy black beards. A young woman was being held by two more men. Her shawl had been pulled away and her big brown eyes stared fearfully at the tall bearded man in the astrakhan coat. Clayton recognised him – he was Sher’s father, Asad Sattar.

            Clayton was too far away to hear what was being said, but he could read Asad’s lips, translating from the tribe’s Pashtu language: ‘You bring shame to my house, Nura!’

            ‘No, father, it is not like that!’

            ‘I have been informed that you dare to gaze with lust on an unworthy man!’

            ‘No, it is Ramin, he is jealous, he wants me but I don’t want him!’

            ‘What you want is of no consequence! You dishonour me and all your family!’

            ‘No, father,’ Sher objected, ‘that is not true!’

            Asad cuffed his son with the back of his big hand. ‘Silence, boy, or I shall cut out your tongue!’ Asad turned back to his daughter. ‘For your transgression, I shall pluck your eyes out and cast you into the wilderness!’

            Asad moved shockingly fast, pulling his curved knife from its belt sheath and flicking its point at Nura’s left eye.

            Clayton’s stomach lurched as the girl screamed. Sher’s eyes brimmed with tears but he didn’t cry out; like all young Afghan men, he was stoic in adversity for he had learned not to cry even if seriously hurt. Clayton steadied his arm and hands, aimed and shot Asad in the head. It was bad enough that anyone would do that to another human being, but for a father to be so brutal beggared belief. He knew all about the medieval practice of Islamic honour killings, but he’d never witnessed any; usually, they occurred behind closed doors. Girls as young as nine were sold or wed to old men and death while giving birth was commonplace.

            Trembling with after-shock, Clayton fired again. This second shot pierced the shoulder of the man on Nura’s left. His third shattered the kneecap of one of the men restraining Sher. Only seconds had elapsed and in that time the remaining men let go of the two youngsters and, helping their wounded comrades, turned and hurried towards the house. For an archaeologist, Clayton thought, he was a pretty good shot. The quality of the rifle helped, he supposed; nothing to brag about, the same type was used in the assassination of President Kennedy.

            Quick-wittedly, Sher spotted Clayton, waved briefly then ran over to his wailing sister who was crouched on the ground, hands covering her face. He grabbed her arm and tugged; reluctantly, she stood, covering one eye with a hand. They ran to the horses and Sher swung into the saddle and hauled his sister up behind him. In seconds, the pair was racing in Clayton’s direction, abandoning their home and village and family forever.

            Sher drew the horse beside Clayton; his sister hugged him tight, burying her face against Sher’s jacket.

            Clayton sheathed the rifle and swung into the saddle. ‘We must lose the pursuit, my friends,’ he shouted, pointing towards the village.

            Sher glanced over his shoulder, past the bowed head of his sobbing sister. Already, four horsemen were riding out of the village, furs flying out behind them, each brandishing long-barrelled jezails; sun glinted on the muskets’ elaborate lattices of mother-of-pearl.

            ‘Let’s go!’ Clayton said, urging his horse up the scree. An experienced young horseman, Sher followed, his sister clinging to him as if for dear life. Seven days from now, I had promised to be in Herat, Clayton fumed. Now, I may spend all that time eluding those damnable tribesmen!

            About an hour later, they entered a narrow defile and he halted his mount. ‘Sher, find me a place where I can transmit a message to Herat.’ His radio was concealed in several hollow sections of his saddle.

            The youngster nodded, his tone serious: ‘Yes, Greystock,’ using one of Clayton’s aliases. He signed for Clayton to follow him as he led his horse to the east.

Me at the gate (baab) to the Khyber Pass (1969)

***

Until I find a publisher for the series, I probably won’t finish Khyber (it’s one-third written already, however, and fully plotted).

 

The Tehran Transmission: Chilling coincidence or what?

On Wednesday, June 17 I received from my publisher a pdf of the cover of The Tehran Transmission. I was pleased with it. It's the hand that's relevant for this post.

A couple of hours later, I went out to buy a Daily Mail and was surprised to note an article on Iran’s restrictions on foreign media – with a photograph of a bloody hand that seemed to echo the book’s cover.

As my book is about the events leading up to the Islamic Revolution, there’s a certain amount of irony involved here, since the current Iranian government is using both the verbal excuses and tactics employed by the Shah the present regime ousted in 1978!

Now if only Libros would get the book off the printer, perhaps some publicity could be engendered… I live in hope.